The sky is falling! Yours truly has been quoted in the Tastings column of today's Wall Street Journal in a discussion of wine pairings. Beware of flying cattle and talking bluebonnets....today, anything can happen!

Hey, it's a holiday for me, gang! Sorry I'm not up at the crack of dawn like IK! [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/wink.gif[/img]

And way to go, Gil! (aka Hotwine)...Gil's quote is in the 7th paragraph.

How to Find Wine That Brings Out
The Best in Food, and Vice Versa
By DOROTHY J. GAITER and JOHN BRECHER

Since spring is a traditional time for lamb and many people prepare it for their Easter dinner, we thought it would be a good idea to write about the perfect wine to have with such a special meal. But let's talk first about "From Russia With Love."

Our favorite scene in that old James Bond movie takes place aboard a train. Sean Connery is having dinner with Robert Shaw, who is pretending to be a fellow agent, and they both order grilled sole. Bond tells the waiter: "I'll have a bottle of the Blanc de Blancs." The bad guy says: "Make mine Chianti -- the red kind."

Minutes later, Robert Shaw knocks Bond unconscious. When 007 wakes up, with a gun in his face, the first thing he says is: "Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something."

The message is clear: Drink the wrong wine with dinner and you might as well be a paid assassin. But what is the "right" wine?

We're asked about wine-and-food matches all the time. This is fun for us because we enjoy helping people create special matches, and, frankly, as serious eaters ourselves, we love hearing about the remarkable meals that people cook. Who wouldn't enjoy the question from Rick and Lola Henderson of Las Vegas, who asked what would go with "oyster stew made with fresh oysters, celery, onions, cayenne and black pepper and whole milk"? (We suggested a sparkling wine.)

Hints of Smoke

Let's start with common sense. There's no one-size-fits-all match between any wine and food. So much depends on what you like. A classic match with roast chicken, for instance, is red Burgundy, but if you don't like red Burgundy, clearly that won't work for you.

The match also depends on how the dish is prepared. Late last year, Dr. M. Dean Jacoby of Dallas wrote to suggest that we try a smoked turkey from a company called Greenberg with a Riesling, which sounded like a fabulous combination to us. We tried that, along with other wines Dr. Jacoby recommended as good combinations. To our surprise, we preferred a creamy Pinot Noir to the Riesling. That discovery, in turn, brought a note from Gil Smith of Helotes, Texas, who wrote that he smokes turkeys himself and "we always go for the Riesling, usually a Spatlese.

"So why the different results?" he continued. "I checked the Web for information on the source of your turkey, the Greenberg company in Tyler, Texas, and found, in a Texas Monthly article from 1997, that they use a hickory fire for smoking their birds. Hickory produces a very distinctive flavor in any meat that is smoked over it, and needs a fairly robust wine to stand up to it. On the other hand, I use nothing but South Texas live oak in the smoking process, and the result is a smoked meat with a more neutral flavor. That allows a gentle white wine like the German Riesling (especially a Mosel) to blend wonderfully with the bird."

Even experts rarely agree on the "perfect" match. We looked at some good Internet sites for advice on matching wine with roast leg of lamb. They suggested Merlot, Chianti, red Burgundy, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Dolcetto, Beaujolais, Cotes-du-Rhone, Bordeaux, Barolo, Barbaresco, Shiraz, Petite Sirah and Zinfandel. Wow. What's a cook to do? We decided to conduct our own test. As it happened, we were on our way to Atlanta for a family reunion, where Dottie's mother always prepares her famous roast leg of lamb.

This is the lamb she cooked for our after-wedding dinner in 1979 and always prepares when we visit her. Like many of the world's best cooks, only she knows how she actually makes this dish, how much of this and that she uses. But for the record, this is what she's willing to share. She marinates the lamb for a day or two in onion, garlic, salt and pepper, ground ginger, oregano, curry powder and either sugar or vinegar. Then she roasts it for an hour at "400 something," then she turns it down lower "for a while" until it's ready.

We dropped in on two wine stores to find enough different wines for a wide array of possible combinations. They were the first two stores we saw, so our experience in buying the wine would be very much like yours. If we were at home, we'd almost surely open a fine old Bordeaux -- not just because we think the elegant but supple red would be an excellent match for the lamb, but because a visit from Dottie's mom is special, and the wine should match the occasion. We didn't have that luxury, though.

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In the stores, we focused on wines under $20, and looked for wineries that are widely distributed. When we got back to Dottie's sister Juarlyn's house -- sister Karen, her husband David and their kids had come up from Tallahassee -- we opened them all up and conducted a pre-dinner tasting (we didn't conduct this blind since we were tasting different kinds of wine). Then, during dinner, we tasted them again.

When we look for a good food-wine pairing, we try to walk a line. We don't want the wine and food to be too similar or too different. If they're too similar -- rich lobster with a big, luscious Chardonnay, for instance -- they just duplicate each other. If they're too different -- pot roast with a floral, acidic Riesling -- they don't complement each other. What we look for is a combination in which the food will make the wine taste better, and vice versa, a classic case of the sum being greater than the parts. Think Tracy and Hepburn, Astaire and Rogers, Ashford and Simpson, Brecher and Gaiter.

We all agreed that the Chianti was wrong -- far too fruity for the elegant, earthy tastes of the meat. We felt the same way about the Pinot Noir. The Pinot was fruity and creamy, with nice perfume and even some lilacs. But the tastes of the lamb made the Pinot seem almost sweet. They clashed.

On and on we went. One Merlot was too grapey and simple, adding nothing to the complexity and different textures of the lamb. We had great hopes for one of the Zinfandels. It was a Rodney Strong "Old Vines" Zinfandel from 1997, and we were all impressed with it during our pre-dinner tasting. It was massive, rich and classy, with nice pepper and tastes of the earth. All in all, it seemed like it would be a perfect pairing. But it wasn't. The big wine overwhelmed the tastes of the lamb.

A couple of tasters, including Dottie, believed a Merlot from Bogle (1999 "Old Vine Cuvee") was the winner. Before dinner, it was simply soft and pleasant, a nice "glass of Merlot" at a smoky bar. With the lamb, Dottie felt that the creaminess, softness and simple smoothness of the wine created something special -- not just a good taste pairing, but a "warming effect" that made the whole meal seem more homey and delicious. She also felt a little acid kick at the end of the wine -- generally wines with good acids go better with food -- was a nice finish with a bite of lamb.

A Beautiful Pair

We had a very interesting experience with a Ravenswood Zinfandel (1998 Vintners Blend). Ravenswood is a great name in Zinfandel, but before dinner, this one, though pleasant, seemed diluted and simple. With the lamb, though, it was a different wine. Tastes that we'd barely registered before -- cream, pepper and a slight bitterness -- seemed more obvious. At the same time, the lamb, with its subtle herbs, became more vibrant when paired with the wine.

We ultimately decided that our favorite wine with the lamb was a Cabernet Sauvignon -- in this case, a Hess Select 1998. The wine was classy, with nice structure and some hints of herbs and spices. Its combination of good fruit, structure and earthiness paired beautifully with the juicy, melt-in-your-mouth tastes of the lamb. They seemed to bring out the best in each other.

So next time we have Grandma Dot's lamb, if we don't have access to an older Bordeaux, we'll likely have a Cabernet Sauvignon or a somewhat soft young Bordeaux, like a Margaux. But that's just us. Make your own decisions based on what you like. After all, in that whole list of the experts' recommendations, there's not a single white wine. And while roast lamb seems like a red-wine dish, there are many people who don't like red wine. Does that mean they should give up lamb altogether, or have no wine with lamb? Of course not. They should just think about a "bigger" white wine -- a Viognier, for instance.

Even assassins know that "perfect" wine-food combinations aren't everything in life. As Robert Shaw responds to James Bond when 007 wakes up on the floor: "You may know the right wines, but you're the one on your knees."